Fatherland (13 page)

"Where did you find them?"

"Next to the bodies."

Stuckart had shot his mistress first. According to the autopsy report, she had lain, fully clothed, facedown on the bed in Stuckart's apartment in Fritz-Todt-Platz. He
had put a bullet into the back of her head with his SS Luger (if that was so, thought March, it was probably the first time the old pen pusher had ever used it). Traces of impacted cotton and down in the wound suggested he had fired the bullet through a pillow. Then he had sat on the edge of the bed and apparently shot himself through the roof of his mouth. In the scene-of-crime photographs neither body was recognizable. The pistol was still clutched in Stuckart's hand.

"He left a note," said Fiebes, "on the dining room table. 'By this action I hope to spare embarrassment to my family, the Reich and the Führer. Heil Hitler! Long live Germany! Wilhelm Stuckart.'"

"Blackmail?"

"Presumably."

"Who found the bodies?"

"This is the best part." Fiebes spat out each word as if it Were poison: "An American woman journalist."

Her statement was in the file: Charlotte Maguire, age 25, Berlin representative of an American news agency, World European Features.

"A real little bitch. Started shrieking about her rights the moment she was brought in. Rights!" Fiebes took another swig of schnapps. "Shit, I suppose we have to be
nice
to the Americans now, do we?"

March made a note of her address. The only other witness questioned had been the porter who worked in Stuckart's apartment block. The American woman claimed to have seen two men on the stairs immediately before the discovery of the bodies, but the porter insisted there had been no one.

March looked up suddenly. Fiebes jumped. ''What is it?"

"Nothing. A shadow at your door, perhaps."

"My God, this place—" Fiebes flung open the frosted- glass door and peered both ways along the corridor. While his back was turned, March detached the envelope pinned to the back of the file and slipped it into his pocket.

"Nobody." He shut the door. "You're losing your nerve, March."

"An overactive imagination has always been my curse." He closed the folder and stood up.

Fiebes swayed, squinting. "Don't you want to take it with you? Aren't you working on this with the Gestapo?"

"No. A separate matter."

"Oh." He sat down heavily. "When you said 'state security,' I assumed... Doesn't matter. Out of my hands. The Gestapo has taken it over, thank God. Obergruppenführer Globus has assumed responsibility. You must have heard of him? A thug, it's true, but he'll sort it out."

The information bureau at Alexander-Platz had Luther's address. According to police records, he still lived in Dahlem. March lit another cigarette, then dialed the number. The telephone rang for a long time—a bleak, unfriendly echo somewhere in the city. Just as he was about to hang up, a woman answered.

"Yes?"

"Frau Luther?"

"Yes." She sounded younger than he had expected. Her voice was thick, as if she had been crying.

"My name is Xavier March. I am an investigator with the Berlin Kriminalpolizei. May I speak to your husband?"

"I'm sorry ... I don't understand. If you're from the police, surely you know—"

"Know? Know what?"

"That he's missing. He disappeared on Sunday." She started to cry.

"I'm sorry to hear that." March balanced his cigarette on the edge of the ashtray.

God in heaven, another one.

"He said he was going on a business trip to Munich and would be back on Monday." She blew her nose. "But I have already explained all this. Surely you know that this

matter is being dealt with at the
very highest
level. What—?"

She broke off. March could hear a conversation at the other end. There was a man's voice in the background, harsh and questioning. She said something he could not hear, then came back on the line.

"Obergruppenführer Globocnik is with me now. He would like to talk to you. What did you say your name was?"

March replaced the receiver.

On his way out, he thought of the call at Buhler's place that morning. An old man's voice:

"Buhler? Speak to me. Who is that?"

"A friend."

Click.

Bülow-Strasse runs west to east for about a kilometer through one of the busiest quarters of Berlin, close to the Gotenland railway station. The American woman's address proved to be an apartment block midway down.

It was seedier than March had expected: five stories high, black with a century of traffic fumes, streaked with bird shit. A drunk sat on the pavement next to the entrance, turning his head to follow each passerby. On the opposite side of the street was an elevated section of the U-bahn. As he parked, a train was pulling out of the Bülow-Strasse station, its red and yellow carriages riding blue-white flashes of electricity, vivid in the gathering dark.

Her apartment was on the fourth floor. She was not in. "Henry," read a note written in English and pinned to her door, "I'm in the bar on Potsdamer-Strasse. Love, Charlie."

March knew only a few words of English—but enough to grasp the sense of the message. Wearily he descended the stairs. Potsdamer-Strasse was a long street with many bars.

"I'm looking for Fräulein Maguire," he said to the concierge in the hall. "Any idea where I might find her?"

It was like throwing a switch. "She went out an hour ago, Sturmbannführer. You're the second man to ask. Fifteen minutes after she went out, a young chap came looking for her. Another foreigner—smartly dressed, short hair. She won't be back until after midnight, that much I can promise you."

March wondered how many of her other tenants the old lady had informed on to the Gestapo.

"Is there a bar she goes to regularly?"

"Heini's, around the corner. That's where all the damned foreigners go."

"Your powers of observation do you credit, madam."

By the time he left her to her knitting, five minutes later, March was laden with information about "Charlie" Maguire. He knew she had dark hair, cut short; that she was small and slim; that she was wearing a raincoat of shiny blue plastic "and high heels, like a tart"; that she had lived here six months; that she stayed out till all hours and often got up at noon; that she was behind with the rent; that he should see the bottles of liquor the hussy threw out... No, thank you, madam, I have no desire to inspect them, that will not be necessary, you have been most helpful. . .

He turned right along
B
ü
low
-Strasse. Another right took him to Potsdamer-Strasse. Heini's was fifty meters up on the left. A painted sign showed a landlord with an apron and a handlebar mustache carrying a foaming stein of beer. Beneath it, part of the red neon lettering had burned out: HEI
     
S.

The bar was quiet except for one corner, where a group of six sat around a table talking loudly in English accents. She was the only woman. She was laughing and ruffling an older man's hair. He was laughing, too. Then he saw March and said something and the laughter stopped. They watched him as he approached. He was conscious of his uniform, of the noise of his jackboots on the polished wooden floor.

"Fräulein Maguire, my name is Xavier March of the Berlin Kriminalpolizei." He showed her his ID. "I would like to speak with you, please."

She had large dark eyes, glittering in the bar lights.

"Go ahead."

"In private, please."

"I've nothing more to say." She turned to the man whose hair she had ruffled and murmured something March did not understand. They all laughed. March did not move. Eventually, a younger man in a sport jacket and a button-down shirt stood up. He pulled a card from his breast pocket and held it out.

"Henry Nightingale. Second secretary at the United States Embassy. I'm sorry, Herr March, but Miss Maguire has said all she has to say to your colleagues."

March ignored the card.

The woman said, "If you're not going to go, why don't you join us? This is Howard Thompson of
The New York Times
." The older man raised his glass. "This is Bruce Fallon of United Press. Peter Kent, CBS. Arthur Haines, Reuters. Henry, you've met. Me, you know, apparently. We're just having a little drink to celebrate the
great news
. Come on. The Americans and the SS—we're all friends now."

"Careful, Charlie," said the young man from the embassy.

"Shut up, Henry. Oh, Christ, if this man doesn't move soon, I'll go and talk to him out of sheer boredom. Look—" There was a crumpled sheet of paper on the table in front of her. She tossed it to March. "That's what I got for getting mixed up in this. My visa's withdrawn for 'fraternizing with a German citizen without official permission.' I was supposed to leave today, but my friends here had a word with the Propaganda Ministry and got me a week's extension. Wouldn't have looked good, would it? Throwing me out on the day of the
great news.
"

March said, "It's important."

She stared at him, a cool look. The embassy man put his hand on her arm. "You don't have to go."

That seemed to make up her mind. "Will you shut up, Henry?" She shook herself free and pulled her coat over her shoulders. "He looks respectable enough. For a Nazi. Thanks for the drink." She downed the contents of her glass—whisky and water, by the look of it—and stood up. "Let's go."

The man called Thompson said something in English.

"I will, Howard. Don't worry."

Outside, she said, "Where are we going?"

"My car."

"Then where?"

"Dr. Stuckart's apartment."

"What fun."

She
was
small. Even clattering on her high heels, she was several centimeters short of March's shoulder. He opened the door of the Volkswagen for her. As she bent to get in, he smelled the whisky on her breath, and also cigarettes—French, not German—and perfume: something expensive, he thought.

The Volkswagen's 1300cc engine rattled behind them. March drove carefully: west along Bülow-Strasse, around the Berlin-Gotenland station, north up the Avenue of Victory. The captured artillery from the Barbarossa campaign lined the boulevard, barrels tilted toward the stars. Normally this section of the capital was quiet at night, Berliners preferring the noisy cafes behind the Ku'damm or the jumbled streets of Kreuzberg. But on this evening, people were everywhere—standing in groups, admiring the guns and the floodlit buildings, strolling and window-shopping.

"What kind of person wants to go out at night and look at guns?" She shook her head in wonderment.

"Tourists," said March. "By the twentieth, there'll be more than three million of them."

It was risky, taking the American woman back to

Stuckart's place, especially now that Globus knew someone from the Kripo was looking for Luther. But he needed to see the apartment, to hear the woman's story. He had no plan, no real idea of what he might find. He recalled the Führer's words—"I go the way that Providence dictates with the assurance of a sleepwalker"—and he smiled.

Ahead of them, searchlights picked out the eagle on top of the Great Hall. It seemed to hang in the sky, a golden bird of prey hovering over the capital.

She noticed his grin. "What's funny?"

"Nothing." He turned right at the European Parliament. The flags of the twelve member nations were lit by spots. The swastika that flew above them was twice the size of the other standards. "Tell me about Stuckart. How well did you know him?"

"Hardly at all. I met him through my parents. My father was at the embassy here before the war. He married a German, an actress. She's my mother. Monika Koch, did you ever hear of her?"

"No. I don't believe so." Her German was flawless. She must have spoken it since childhood; her mother's doing, no doubt.

"She'd be sorry to hear that. She seems to think she was a big star over here. Anyway, they both knew Stuckart slightly. When I arrived in Berlin last year, they gave me a list of people to go and talk to—contacts. Half of them turned out to be dead, one way or another. Most of the rest didn't want to meet me. American journalists don't make healthy company, if you know what I mean. Do you mind if I smoke?"

"Go ahead. What was Stuckart like?"

"Awful." Her lighter flared in the darkness; she inhaled deeply. "He made a grab at me, even though this woman of his was in the apartment at the same time. That was just before Christmas. I kept away from him after that. Then last week I got a message from my office in New York. They wanted a piece for Hitler's seventy-fifth

birthday, talking to some of the people who knew him from the old days."

"So you called Stuckart?"

"Right."

"And arranged to meet him on Sunday, and when you got there, he was dead?"

"If you know it all," she said irritably, "why do you need to talk to me again?"

"I don't know it all, Fräulein. That's the point."